How-To Geek

There are a lot of metrics you should pay attention to when buying new PC components. Temperature, bandwidth, wattage, capacity, you name it. But there's one metric that just doesn't matter much these days, and that's clock speed. In the past, this number may have meant something, but not anymore.

Google is expanding its content transparency tools within the Gemini app. It is now possible to verify videos generated by the company's own artificial intelligence models. Keep in mind, this is exclusive to anything Gemini made, because the AI uses an ID that only it can see.

It only takes a few minutes to set up a safe, secure, and speedy Wi-Fi network. But it's also very easy to make mistakes along the way. Here are some of the most common mistakes people make when setting up their home Wi-Fi network, plus some ways to avoid these mistakes.

Peacock has a diverse selection of movies and TV shows, but it also contains another form of media that you might not be aware of: games, playable from the mobile app. So, instead of clicking on the next episode of Law & Order: SVU or Love Island USA, you can play Peacock's games for a quick break.

Google recently released its own code editor, Antigravity. Based on Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code, Antigravity brings a lot to the table. I’ve been using it for the past few weeks, and here’s why I think it should be your IDE of choice.

2025 is coming to a close, and it's shaping up to be Android's most pivotal year yet. While many of the updates might seem like surface-level polish, five fundamental shifts are elevating Android from its usual “powerful but rough” reputation to a more premium and polished platform.

Cloudflare is used by a huge number of businesses to enhance the performance and security of their sites and services. It offers useful functions such as protecting sites from DDoS attacks and reducing latency. When Cloudflare stops working, however, many users can no longer access those sites and services. With two recent major global outages in recent months, you might want to consider ditching some apps that stop working when Cloudflare goes down.

If you own an old webcam you no longer use, don't throw it away. The old cammy still has life in it and can continue to be useful in one of the following roles.

The automotive market is changing faster than ever, and 2026 is shaping up to be a breaking point for dozens of familiar vehicles. Shifting consumer demand, stricter emissions regulations, and the industry’s rapid pivot toward electrification are forcing automakers to make hard decisions. As a result, a wide range of cars, trucks, and SUVs are quietly heading toward extinction, even if they still have loyal followings today.

In most counting scenarios in Excel, COUNTBLANK reliably counts blank cells, and COUNTA reliably counts populated cells. However, with these functions comes a problematic paradox: an empty string from a formula is counted as "blank" by COUNTBLANK but as "populated" by COUNTA.

I’ve been a bit late with the Christmas decorations this year, and that’s partly because I’ve been waiting for something to arrive in the mail. Rather than spending a fortune on AA batteries to power my favorite Christmas lights, I’m switching to a battery eliminator this year.

Have you ever stared at a large directory of file names and dreaded the idea of renaming them all? Or perhaps your scripts are littered with conditional statements checking to see if an environment variable exists. Bash provides a concise syntax for changing strings that makes life easier. They're called parameter expansions, and I'll show you how to use them.

Samsung Galaxy XR, a collaboration between Samsung and Google to take on the likes of the Apple Vision Pro, is the first Android XR headset. It serves as a showcase for an upcoming ecosystem of devices, and it happens to be easy to recommend to anyone interested in trying their hand at spatial computing, assuming they set aside a budget comparable to a high-end PC.

OnePlus has always been at the forefront of zippy Android flagship phones—and the OnePlus 15 is no different. It's one of the first Android smartphones on the market with the powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC, which will likely appear in many other Android flagships, including Samsung devices, starting in 2026. If you want to get a head start on this powerful new chip, the OnePlus 15 is your phone.

Music Assistant’s just dropped its biggest update yet. It comes with a visual overhaul, a host of new features, and the introduction of a custom multimedia streaming protocol. If you use Home Assistant and rely on this awesome audio manager, you'll love version 2.7.

Meta previously announced plans to develop VR and XR headsets with ASUS and Lenovo, using the same software as Meta's own Quest headsets. Those plans are now cancelled, but the headsets could be reworked as Android XR hardware.

I clearly remember getting my first MP3 player, which replaced my aging portable CD player in the mid 2000s. It was some no-name device with the build quality of a wet matchbox, but it was small and sounded just as good to my ear. The only problem was the storage space—it only held 1GB of data. That's still a decent number of MP3s, but a lack of storage was a problem that plagued virtually all MP3 players up to that point—until Apple solved the issue in a novel way: a teeny-tiny hard drive!

Google Reader was a fantastic way to keep up with your favorite blogs and news sources with RSS feeds, but it was discontinued years ago. Now, Google has remembered that RSS feeds still exist, but this is unfortunately not a return for Reader.

Not long ago, drivers had to choose between everyday luxury and supercar-level thrills. These days, many cars offer both—a smooth, comfortable ride for daily driving and spirited fun on twisty weekend roads.

If you only ever use Google Wallet when tapping a payment terminal, there's a good chance you're missing out on a lot of what the app can do. With just a few small tweaks, it can replace almost everything in your physical wallet and make everyday tasks run a lot smoother.